When two hearts collide
by Illusionary Ghost
Summary: Celine and Chris' relationship is on the rocks, but neither has the strength to admit it's time to move on. Will Celine stay in this rocky romance or will she find REAL true love with someone she knew long ago.
1. part 1

August 3, 2003

(Author's Note: Dedicated to all SO2 Fans who support the pairing I am writing about. Which pairing? ^_^ *grins impishly* As I plan to write a few more parts, it will be best to take a guess at the moment. Thanks to Aile Anna for looking it over and finding most mistakes I couldn't. One last note: Heraldry is a type of magic used in the game.)

By Yashira

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When two hearts collide

Part 1

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"What about us, Chris? What's going to happen to us?" 

The magnitude of those words, even now, tore through her muddled and confused senses in ways she could not deal with. Celine wished that these tormenting thoughts would leave her alone; she had no need for the pain they inflicted. How could she make a complete and utter fool of herself by acting like some love-sick girl demanding – begging – to know where her relationship stood with a man she believed had once loved her? ~I should have left well enough alone. I know I should…~ 

She had not. 

Wanting and not wanting to know had eaten through to her very will, making her jittery and cranky to people who deserved not her unerring wrath. It was not good to snap or curse at those who only sought help from her, but her words – spoken in anger and meant for another – would often time strike them just the same. Help was asked sparingly and when she did visit towns and cities that needed her, people would speak respectfully and in low whispers as if ready to bolt away with their tails between their legs. They were so afraid of upsetting Celine that most often or not they could not deal directly with her; it would be during those moments that the young heraldry user felt the most ashamed of all. 

What was she doing, bringing her problematic relationship onto people who knew none of it? She had to do something, anything! Confronting Chris as he sat in his royal bedchamber, attended by servants, had been trying… even down right scary at first, but it had to be done. If she wanted any true measure of sanity to return, she would have to do this and yet, how could she talk to her fiancée when he was a Prince surrounded by his title, wealth, and power while all she had to her name was the power she grew up with in Mars village. They were so very different and she feared that it might have only been the differences that had attracted him to her. If that was the case…

God! It frightened her to approach him and to watch those serious eyes dismiss his servants when he saw that look in her face. That look! It was the same one he wore in his face when they were alone. Pity, sympathy - the look of someone who was sorry that things had turned out like this. 

How had it all changed? He'd once been engaged to the Princess Rosalia – the fact which had driven him into hiding to avoid such a fate. He'd met Celine in the provinces; the two had fallen in love, but had kept most of their private affairs secret. Secret…

Why had they decided to keep it a secret?! What did they have to hide? Royalty and commoner? Nobility and Heraldry. Perhaps she had half suspected it even then, but it had been so much easier to hide the truth from her blind eyes. Opening the way to her heart, saying things best kept locked away, she had offered him the key that led onto the ultimate path of pain. Wrenched open and floundering on the ground, she had watched helplessly as he took her heart and returned… nothing.

"My love, it is not like that. We still…exist."

That had been his answer. 

We still exist?! Her thoughts fumed at that answer as if to cover up the despair she also felt for it. Well, a tree grew and IT existed! Air flowed around them, and it existed. So they existed? Why couldn't he answer her with something sweet or romantic, like grabbing her suddenly and kissing her to show his feelings were the same. He didn't even reach out or touch her, no instead he turned back to his mirror as if he too was afraid to say the words. 

****

"Hey, watch where you're going!"

With a start Celine jerked her head up, violet curls of hair bouncing up with the movement as words instantly came to her lips, "Why don't you watch it yourself, you macho jerk! DIAS?!"

The tall blue-haired swordsman, dressed in his usual black leather pants and tunic, and accompanied by his forest green cloak and longsword, stared down at her with the barest hint of amusement. Dias had seen her coming along, but hadn't said a word as he assumed Celine would have noticed him by now. She wasn't the type of person to walk with her head in the clouds and her distraction surprised him enough to call out a warning. "So? What are you doing out of the castle? I didn't know they let you go out and play with other people." 

Celine was too surprised at first to reply, instead she simply gawked like some kid about to get their first crest tattoos. What in the world was Dias Flac doing in Cross? Last she heard, he was still in Lacour preparing for the next tournament. "What the hell does that mean?" By the time she found her voice, her violet eyes had already taken in his well-lined face, the proud, haughty cheeks and that serious, self-righteous sky-blue stare of his. There was something about those incurable blue eyes that suggested he took in things a lot more internally than he ever let show externally. No matter, she wasn't going to let him taunt her into some petty and silly argument today, was she? "You say that as if I should be locked in the dungeon. That's not funny, Dias. If anyone should be locked up, it's you for that bad attitude of yours." Well, she tried.

"I don't ever recall saying you could call me by my first name, Celine." His crisp eyes flickered over her, his tone droll and serious at the same time. The man had that annoying habit of being superior and aloof with that better than thou attitude of his as if he'd been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Not like it affected Celine much, she had her own attitude in comparison. She was usually the cheery, happy go lucky type of person, but at the same time she was also quite willing to help herself to things, or budding her nose into people's business as if she felt she had every right to. 

"Oh, that's a funny one. You can call me by mine, and I can't call you by yours, hmm?" She wrapped her hands over her slender hips, with legs standing open, before tossing her fine head at him. Dressed in her more than revealing short white- with pink highlights- dress and long stockings that stopped by mid thigh to reveal the mark of red tattoos etched beneath, Celine was quite a sight to behold. It was like a girl's pretty doll standing proudly against a boy's grim and unforgiving action figure. She was all curves and soft flesh, and he was all angles and hard muscle.

Dias shrugged and glanced off towards the fair ground around them as if he didn't notice her. He seemed more interested on the multitude of wooden stages, canvas tents, and stalls littered around the fairground. Supposedly, there was to be festival , one of many that the Castle of Cross was fond of implementing, and the place was littered with structures and people from all over the planet. Muscled men flexed bulging biceps at one end, girls selling sweet-smelling candies at another, while a group of troubadours, in bright, bold colours, danced past. Music gathered on the breeze drifted back towards them carrying with it the sounds of harp, lute and bodram which tasted of folklore and distant tales. "Well, the way your Prince hangs onto your arm, you think he does."

"He doesn't-" But that was right! How would Dias know about her troubles with Chris? Secret, it was a secret, remember? She bristled, her cheeks colouring, as she turned to look around the busy fair as if letting her protest trail into nothingness. People she recognized in passing, perhaps a scoreful she had met on her travels with Rena and the others, in what now seemed like years ago, drifted among the fairway like long lost strangers. She'd walked right by them without so much as a hello on either part; what must they think of her? Were they all to become nameless faces in the crowd; what must they think of her? With a deep breath that revealed most of the emptiness that had recently been growing in her heart, she let the sigh escape without thinking.

"What's wrong with you?" His rich blue eyes had seen the look pass her face and the lack of that dazzling confident smile she usually wore drew his attention like a moth to a flame. That what not normal Celine behaviour. It wasn't like he should care. They had been companions once in the quest to save Expel and be rid of the Ten Wisemen, but there had been nothing between them otherwise. In fact, he was questioning himself in even wasting the time to ask such a thing. It wasn't any of his business.

"What? Oh nothing." She lifted a hand, drew it across her lips and chuckled as if to hide the thoughts that previously consumed her. Dias would be the last person she would blab her problems to. How could he ever understand what it was like to love someone so fiercely and to wake up one day to find that belief questioned? He, Dias, was a man who put his strength in protecting himself. She seriously doubted he could know what it felt to put his strength in protecting another living human being. And where the heck was this thought trailing off to? Why did she suddenly want to compare Chris to Dias? The two were NOTHING alike - at all!

Chris was a sweetheart compared to the cold-aloof hearted Dias. The prince was quiet, careful in what he said, but he was always approachable. Dias was the complete OPPOSITE! He was a blunt, careless man, he didn't know how to speak a kind word without putting in some sort of insult. There simply couldn't be any real comparison. He was the damn last person she needed to see!

"Well, if it's nothing, you'll excuse me then." He could have said a lot of things like, "It's good to see you." Or "I'm glad you're well," but he didn't. Celine was right, Dias wasn't one to afford many words to his spoken vocabulary, so he was blunt and brisk. There was nothing to keep him here with her so why waste time. 

It was with an odd lump in her throat that Celine watched Dias' fine broad back turn away as his blue hair swirled like the sweeping end of a closing curtain. Fine, let him go! She didn't need someone like him who was brisk and cold and incapable of feelings, did she? No! She had enough problems with- 

Without knowing what she was doing nor when she had thrown her arms around his back to wrap around his waist, Celine found her face suddenly buried against his cloak – tears pouring freely down. "There is! There is, Dias! Oh god, Dias! I don't know what to do."


	2. Part 2

(Author's Note: Dedicated to all SO2 Fans who support the pairing I am writing about. As you can tell, it's obviously a Dias and Celine pairing. ^_^v Thanks to Aile Anna for being my support and for editing my work when I'm too blind to see the mistakes. ^-^v Except for that one mistake she made, which I now corrected and reuploaded. "Why do you have to be like that?" She deleted Celine's line forgetting that it was referenced to in the follow paragraph by Dias; I hope that clears that confusion up..)

By Yashira

When two hearts collide

Part 2

Speechless as if the proverbial cat had torn out his tongue, Dias's body stood rigid like a thousand year old statue that had never crumbled away. Blue eyes wide, cheeks momentarily paled by their surprise, his thoughts reeled. Celine? The question was there, just on the tip of his tongue, but he could no more force it from his lips as he could the woman who was sobbing miserably against his shoulders. Her soft delicate arms, as she wrapped them around his chest, lacerated any rational thought with a quick rupturing flick as her sweet-smelling body pressed close to his. What in blazes was wrong with him? With her? He had never been so tongue tied for words in all his life. And for what, because she had wrapped her soft, feminine curves around his rough, angular back? Impossible. The aloof and proud swordsman's impregnable defensives could not be penetrated by a simple, pitiable touch of a woman. _…not by Celine's touch._

"Celine," he breathed through half astounded lips while his fingers cautiously reached out and very slowly pressed over her own. Sarcastic and biting wit, the very curt words that were his usual brisk, to the point weapons, were gone. Jerked away as if, by this sudden movement of hers he stood exposed and enveloped in a shroud of weakness he had not known he was susceptible of, Dias found he could no more finish the sentence, then he could shake her away. 

"He doesn't love me," her voice quavered, half muffled by his cloak, as she had buried her shameful face within its forest green fabric. It was as if she sought to keep from crying, but the painful warble in her voice proved she was faltering. Half-way between speaking Celine trailed off, unable to continue. "Not like before…. things have changed. He has-"

Dias's hands lightly rested over hers. It was almost as if he were afraid that she was some sort of trick of his senses. Perhaps if he turned around and looked at her, really looked at her, he would find himself suddenly alone. "Problems with you and the Prince then? I shouldn't be surprised, you're such a spoiled and high-strung girl." Addressed in that gruff and flat tone of his, spoken out of instinct and without thought, he was surprised that he inwardly flinched at himself. He should have sugar-coated his words, spread across them a sweetness that would have made them seem less terrible and rude. But no, instead he spoke as if he were blowing away what she had said by treating it as casually as he would a rough "hello" or a "good-bye". 

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I am spoiled and high-strung…" She rubbed her cheek against his strong, sturdy back as if relishing in the comfort she could find in his powerful build. Dias had been the strong one in the group. After what life had viciously thrown at him, no one could reach that iron wall of fortitude that he had surrounded himself with in retaliation. If she could just hang against him for a moment longer, if she could soak up the strength in his limbs, perhaps it would make her feel better. It was a desperate hope, but one she clung to as she kept close to him. 

His blue eyes shot open with a start. This was not like Celine at all; he had never expected her to agree with him. Turning to look at her as a soft breeze ruffled through his blue hair, he shifted his gaze over her with a questionable look. With her face buried in his cloak, he could only see a shimmer of light violet hair, but it was the way she huddled there. Huddled as if she had hit rock bottom and had no other place to go. What the heck had happened between her and Chris? He had never thought that Celine, the proud, pushy and ultra-nosy woman could ever cow-tow to another man in terms of who and what she was. It was just unimaginable for Dias that she would be so unhappy. 

But why should he treat her any different than anyone else, his mind quickly rationalized. He didn't get startled when Claude or that idiot Ashton talked about how wretched they felt at key moments in their lives, so it should be the same with Celine. Plus, he had to remind himself, there was always that little fact that he _didn't _care about what happened between her and Chris. So, things weren't going that well in the "dream" world she had with him and now Celine wanted someone to go crying to? The thought infuriated him, he was no confidant or "girl" friend placed in Cross for Celine's convenience. He'd only come to the city because it was on route to Arlia - that was it. Running into Celine had been purely an accident. 

And yet, as he glanced down at her arms which were encased by his fingers, he found such thoughts floundering. So smooth and delicate, her skin was like silk in his rough weathered hands. It should have been a crime that he could feel her this close, that he could almost imagine seeing her applying lotion to keep the skin soft and gentle. What would Chris think if he saw Celine holding onto him like this, hmm? Somehow that thought brought a wry grin of satisfaction to his lips. He almost wished that that Prince of Cross could walk in on them now. "So it is your fault?" Although, he would never admit it to himself, something still irked Dias. Why had her first words, after hugging him, been about that man? "I mean, afterall, you're a _woman_ right?"

"What's that suppose to mean?" She parried back at him, her voice momentarily gaining a degree of vigor at his ill-mannered tone. Here she was, miserable and inconsolable and his words were edged in black accusation. What was it about Dias' gruff tone that always made her feel as if he was issuing a challenge to her? A challenge that she could neither back down from or turn away without losing a good amount of dignity. "It just died. There wasn't anything I could do. Why do you have to be like that?"

He didn't answer right away. His blue eyes flickered over his shoulders as if to watch her reaction to the very words she had said. What did she want him to say? True, her body pressing against his had addled his senses for a brief moment, forcing his tongue to knot itself repetitively, but now that they spoke back and forth, he wasn't completely helpless like before. "Be like what? You aren't the same Celine I remember, so it shouldn't matter what I say." It was like he had been goading her towards something. Each word he spoke, each surly and impolite intonation he flexed into his words all seemed to lead somewhere. "The Celine I remember had the presumption to think she could save a bunch of kids kidnapped by bandits all by herself. This one here, couldn't even light a fireball anymore."

"Hey." Pulled out of her self-tormenting pit by such insulting words, Celine's eyes widened as she tried to pull back with a curt reply, "I'm the same Celine that fought against those bandits AND I can cast a fireball on you right now, so watch what you say. AND I COULD." She snapped, tossing her head as if she could sway his words as simply as that. How could he dare say she had changed? What did he know- "Eh?" Halfway through speaking, his hands had firmly clamped down on hers, squeezing shut over them so that she could not pull away. Though she mumbled it against his shoulders, there was a colouring blush along her cheeks. "Let go."

"Will you cry if I let go?" He sounded cold, almost calculated as if he was purposely leading her into this argument. In short, his voice spoke as if it was smirking at her. "Will you be the same Celine I once knew?"

"No… I won't cry." Her words came out with a soft puff of air as a warm look fluttered through her now understanding eyes. He'd purposely said those words, her look seemed to say. Said them to shake her up and make her realize that she was acting foolishly. In more ways than she could understand, Dias had been worried for her and unlike Chris, he hadn't wanted her to change at all - to be something that she wasn't. Had it unnerved him to hear her speaking like that? Like a demoralized person trapped in a shadowed room with no way out except despair. Thinking about how she had been made Celine feel embarrassed and horrified. Dias had been right, she had not been acting like herself at all. 

Perhaps this had been the source of her troubles with Chris then? They were acting not as they were, but as they assumed the other had wanted them to be? A prince had need of a princess, someone who would be there, pretty and attentive, but who would throw off her own happiness for his own. As much as she wanted to be that princess for Chris, as much as she wanted to love and care for a man who had first shown an interest in her, she simply could not do so. Maybe she had been desperate for love so badly that she had been blind to her own feelings. That made a lot more sense. Pressured by her family to marry, pressured by society that seemed to frown if the woman was unattached, she had simply accepted Chris because he was there… he was convenient. 

Had Chris felt the same? Had he tried to escape the rigid confines of his role, but had not seemed to think ahead about what it would mean in the long run? The more she thought about it the more she realized that their love might have been some fabrication they were both too afraid to let go. And, as Celine thought on this, she wondered if Chris had ever accepted her whole-heartedly like the others - like Dias? The answer that came back was a simple No. He had never tried to snap her out of one of her dark moods when she became obsessed with the belief that he did not love her. He would back away and let her be and let her deal with her own feelings.

…let the doubts fester so that every time she fell back into melancholy it would be worse than before.

Yes, she mused, her thoughts trailing to the man who stood with her now, Chris and Dias were completely different. Completely different. "Thank you, Dias."

"Oh? I didn't do anything." He looked surprised, his head cocking to one side as he tried to puzzle through her current tone. She sounded relieved somehow. In turn a part of him felt something akin to despair wash over at that startling realization. He'd crumbled. The once mighty Dias, the man no one dared approached for fear of his sharp tongue, and ice-cold looks, had succumb to making a friend feel better. What was the world coming to?

And she would probably just go back to the Prince now. Where had that thought come from? Not only had it lingered in the back of his mind as if it meant to accuse him of something, but it was also snickering as if he were a simpleton. He had been close, at least something had told him that much, but now he had ruined it for good. A fool and an idiot. He wasn't sure which was worse; helping Celine feel better or helping Celine to go back to that … Chris. 

"But, you did," Celine's voice was warm now and filled with a hope that had been missing to her for the pass years. Drawing back from Dias, and fixing him a bright look, she waited for him to turn. Although they had been off to the side, away from the main traffic of Cross and Fair people so they drew little or no attention to themselves, Celine still had the decency to be properly embarrassed. Here she had been carrying on like a silly school girl, where just anyone could see. "Would you like to go for a cup of Sambai Tea, Dias?"

Blinking at her, as if he couldn't figure out what had changed, his eyes following the flow of her hair and the shy smile on her lips. Just what was she up to? She hadn't acted all coy and playful for ages. It wasn't an unwelcome change, but a startling one. "Okay, but you're buying."

"Sure." And reaching out for his hand, twisting her smaller fingers into his bigger ones, she pulled him towards the fair. 


End file.
